Morning Buzz: Tuesday 11.22.11

City offers Occupy LA a deal, that City Hall PR contract gets messy, a new dance company from Benjamin Millipied, new board members at the Press Club and Father Dollar Bill dies.

Top of the news

City officials have offered Occupy L.A. protesters free downtown office space, access to land to farm and other incentives to get them to leave the camp outside City Hall, camp negotiators said at last night's general assembly. LAT, DN

Politics and politicos

That PR contract we told you about for the City Council's redistricting panel has of course turned into a political contest among firms with lobbying deals and other ties to City Hall. "I don't think this will be viewed as a positive development," said Councilwoman Jan Perry. LAT, DN

The chancellor of UC Davis apologized in a tense speech before about 1,000 students and others for the campus' police use of pepper spray on peaceful students, and placed the police chief on administrative leave. LAT, Bee

Lt. John Pike, the UC Davis police officer believed to have pepper-sprayed students on campus Friday, is a former United States Marine who was given an award for valor in 2007 when he saved other officers from a scissor-wielding patient at the school's medical center. Sacto Bee

Robert Kovacik of KNBC and Barbara Gasser, an Austrian reporter based in L.A., were elected to two-year terms on the Los Angeles Press Club board. President Will Lewis, Jill Stewart, Beth Barrett and Jane Engle were reelected. Gloria Zuurveen, owner and editor of Pace News, was appointed to a vacancy.

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Rev. Maurice Chase, the Catholic priest known as "Father Dollar Bill," gave away $1 bills to the homeless on Skid Row on holidays, such as Thanksgiving and Easter, for 32 years. He died Sunday night of cancer at age 92. KTLA

Brandon McInerney, the Oxnard teenager who shot and killed a gay schoolmate three years ago, agreed to serve 21 years in prison and avoid a second trial. LAT

Choreographer Benjamin Millepied is launching a new local dance company, L.A. Dance Project, with a commission from Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center. LAT

Warner Bros. has recreated the old Slapsy Maxie's nightclub in a former Bellflower supermarket for an upcoming movie, Gangster Squad, in which Sean Penn plays the late mobster Mickey Cohen. Patrick Goldstein/Big Picture

Ira Michael Heyman, the former UC Berkeley chancellor who became the first non-scientist to lead the Smithsonian Institution, has died at 81. LAT, Wash Post, Smithsonian